Ch. 4: The Voice of Colebrook
Chapter Four The Voice of Colebrook Ronnie Wendy biked down Rt. 8 north of Winsted, his scarf pulled tightly over his face against the November cold. The burnished countryside was somber but far from cheerless, with the muted deep brown of oaks—some still changing from green to yellow—and the fallow golden-brown of the beech trees in the forests. He loved beeches at this time of year: they were every shade of green fading to yellow, and yellow into golden brown like well-toasted bread. Wind whipped his scarf as he bowled down the hill; until he suddenly clenched his handbrakes and brought the unwieldly vehicle to a complaining halt. Where the leaves had fallen from the goldenrod several cans and bottles lay revealed. Leaning the bike against the cable-fencing that followed the road, Ronnie nimbly climbed over and began rooting in the dead brush. Budweiser. A glass bottle or two—one was a Snapple, forget that, they had no CT value. A “SOBE” flavored-water bottle, with the opaque covering decorated with transparent flowers. He picked this up, glancing over it to find the list of states’ initials—this brand sometimes had a CT refund value, sometimes not. Sure enough, there among the list was CT, and Ronnie stuffed it into the already bulging black garbage bag balancing lopsidedly over his basket and handlebars. He was beginning to wonder if he would make it to the Winsted Stop & Shop—the Super Stupor as he called it—before he ran out of room in that sack. A soda bottle. A Sprite can. Man, this highway was exceedingly coniferous today. Getting his top-heavy load underway, Ronnie had cause to marvel yet again at his good fortune in finding this bike. Dark-green, a six-speed with three wheel-gears, it travelled almost as quietly as a ghost. He pedaled on through Robertsville—which wasn’t much of a village, really, just a waymeet with a big sprawling agglomeration of budded-on outbuildings and wings that had probably been a factory once but was now an antique shop. A big old barn grew right by the road, with a strange secret old house shrouded by yews and pines nearby it. Robertsville had been formed around the manufacturing that sprouted around the Falls, but the factories had passed on like wraiths and left only ruins and an occasional outbuilding. The land changed, grew eerie and remote. Even though he was heading south, his back to the wilds of the North, he felt as if he was still going north and into a strange land. He felt this way every time he was up here. There was just something about those tall straggly pines, the way they reached, the distant mountain-wall marching south behind them—something, well, distant. As if the road, asphalt highway though it was, and the little people in their machines who passed along it, were intruders in an ancient place, and they were gazed on by the place as one gazes on at things passing by the window of one’s car: as if road and cars alike were ghosts and the land on which they ran was eternal, and cared nothing for them one way or the other. It gave him a queer, and very small, feeling. “The atmosphere of the North.” he muttered. He pedaled on for some way in silence. “We think of this as the New World,” he ruminated aloud, “Our history here goes back only four hundred years, and we think we are the first, because we see only the ruins of the savages and their tropical civilisations; because we see no trace of true culture or any deep legends besides the puerile myths of the Indians. And yet the land here in New England, in the northern mountains, in the wild pine forests and unpopulated hills, you can feel it, you can feel how ancient is this land that we call new. Not as ancient, perhaps, as the Old World where elves once did walk; there are no elves here, why should there be, when west was where they gazed and their longing never clung to the bending of the earth. But we are ancient as well, still; and I feel it, I feel the footsteps of beings that have passed, and guardians of places so long forsaken even their guards have forgotten why they are here. Does the land remember what has been? Does the living rock still speak to all who hearken? I do not know. But I do not think so. We live at the end of the world, when it has grown so old all memory of how it was has passed away.” He climbed up to the Hemlock Meeting House, as it was called: a four-way intersection with Robertsville Rd at the height of a low open hill backed by woods. A cemetery stood in one corner, filled with tall pale graves stained with rain: Hemlock Cemetary. Where the Meeting House had been there was no indication, but here it had stood, though why it was called Hemlock no one now knew. Some said because of the hemlock bark the tanneries harvested; others, that a hemlock tree grew near it. As he bowled down the hill, two houses drew his eye: one a large high white old house above a swampy field, buried in shrubs, only recognizable as inhabited by the car in the drive; but below it was a house more ancient still, unpainted and grey, plank-sided and wood-shingled, the windows very slightly lopsided as if hung by amateurs. A dark green oil lantern hung by the door, and in the two windows on either side there were flower-patterned curtains. When he had passed it he came to a stop, gazing at the end of the rectangular dwelling. By some quirk of the builder the entire side of the house resembled a face: two windows at the top for eyes, a double loft door between them for nose, two barred windows just below like a mouth, and the plank siding nailed diagonally so as to slant down on either side like whiskers. The pines drew in again then fell back. Odd brown paddocks, goldenrodded and empty around an old horse barn, bore a sign on the fence saying “Camp”. He passed a place where scattered white pines punctuated an open area, a strange high mountain far off on the right. This drew slowly closer, until it rose like a wall behind the houses he was encountering with ever increasing frequency. He rode through Nelson’s Corners where the old North Road, said to be the first through these parts, crossed before climbing Dish Mill Hill on his right—but had it been the first, or had other beings once made other roads here, consumed by the changes of the world as if they had never been? Under the old North Road as it climbed flowed a small stream over a many-branched cascade down a stepped bluff of black stone. A large stony river looped in on the left: Still River still, but with a voice and hurry now that he bore the waters of the Mad. The mountain rose so near that the quaint, sagging old houses were built upon its’ very feet. Street Hill, he remembered it was called, although the Annals had been vague about whether the mountain or a knob at its’ feet surmounted by streets was actually Street. Ronnie opted for the mountain. The place in summer had a curious, green, tusselled look to it, but the green now lingered only in lawns and the frequent hemlocks. Houses clustered closer, standing at all different levels: some were decrepit but quaintly so. Ancient brick buildings rose to shut in the river, and far below he could be heard roaring down twin chutes of rock as he passed through the Gorge. Ronnie above him looked down at the river with some fascination. He passed 1st Baptist—or 2nd Baptist, he supposed—low and squat like a stone fort. He biked down the curving paths of the Green and crossed Rt. 44—Main St—at the Dairy Queen crosswalk, where Old Rt 8 came up from Torrington. The yellow brick college fell behind. For the moment he paid it no heed, heading east up the hill toward Pleasant Valley and his home: he would be seeing quite enough of the place over the winter. He ignored McDonald’s and Dunkin Donuts: it had to be a long time since he’d loosened his pocket money enough to spend there. The last hill before Super Stupor, at the foot of Wallens Hill, was especially difficult if you were trying to balance an overstuffed sack of cans. But he made it, up past the last close-set row of townhouses and the gas station with the red sign ($2.97 a gallon, God help us) and what had been Canton Cycles until last month, and the college’s Learning Center building, and then the highway entrance to Interstate 8 and the bridge with the dislocated sidewalk. Some blocks differed in elevation by more than half a foot. But the Highway Dept. had finally noticed it and ramps of asphalt made biking on the sidewalk an actual option. Then he crossed Torringford Rd, which ran along the mountainous crest of the east rim of the Still River Valley, parallel to both highway and Winsted Rd. Unlike them it was all up and down. Addicted to a straight line, he thought, even though he knew that for the roadmakers of old the mountain forest had proved far easier to traverse than the jungled marshes of the flat valley. Downhill from here was a breeze. St. Joseph’s Cemetary lay on the right behind a belt of trees. With the leaves down he could look right into the deep ravine like a notch in the hill, between him and the cemetery. Once the railroad had run there, but that was almost two hundred years back, and all that remained were old cuts and causeways. Gaining speed Ronnie coasted past the boarded-up KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken, not Knights of Columbus), a sad little place set way back behind a curved drive, a swampy area between it and the road. At the bottom the road curved left around a steep brown slope. There was a traffic light and a shopping plaza on the right, most of which was Super Stop & Shop, but two wings held assorted odd businesses, and until recently a Blockbuster Video. Ronnie crowded the guardrail to avoid the cars in the right-turn lane that here occupied the gutter. Wobbling he rounded the corner successfully and dodged shoppers crossing his path in both directions, to the store and to the parking lot, walking with grim oblivion of everything that impeded their way. He came to a staggering halt by a Do Not Park sign near the far entrance. Locking up his bike he stood for a moment looking around. Super Stop & Shop occupies the floor of a wide bowl between arms of the West Hill highland that bars the way south of Rt. 44 for some miles. A high ridge crowned with pines rises above the circular swamp that collects the headwaters of Mallory Brook, and behind the plaza is a low grey wall where the other arm encroaches on the store and was eaten back. It reminded him in summer of those mysterious lines in Tolkien’s song of St. Brendan, “As a green cup, deep in a brim of green, With wine the white sun fills…” But the green had left the bowl now, and all was gray and brown for winter. With a sigh he seized his big heavy sack and hefted it into the air in front of him, not anxious to be slinging a messy sack over his shoulder. Inside the blast of hot air felt wonderful after the cold ride down. Halloween decorations were everywhere with their fake “reduced” prices. Want reduced prices, go to Dollar Store a couple weeks after. He’d seen them as much as 75% off at the Family Dollar down the road. He ignored the automatic doors in front of him into the main store, instead pulling out a shopping cart and dumping the sack into it, then wheeling it to the left, down a corridor between the plate glass front wall and the rack that held shopping carts. An Employees Only door blocked the way, but sliding doors on the right (open for now) took him into a small room behind the cart rack where the can machines were. The walls were a tacky yellow. A few flies buzzed listlessly around the five big square machines that stood against one side, facing the door. They were iron grey with dark blue panels, plastic-surfaced, with green buttons, and although they were far out of date they were modern compared to, say, those at Torrington Super Stupor ten miles south. Two trash containers stood at the left-hand end of the rectangular room, one for recycling plastic bags and the other, a metal ring on a stand with a bag dangling from it, for general trash. A square wastebasket stood on the near wall next the doors, beside the counter for the bottle clerk, also square with a tan surface and old-fashioned cash register for typing out receipts. Ronnie rummaged in these. He was in luck: some idiots had thrown out a lot of cans with CT values, simply because the machine wouldn’t take them. A set of Price-Rite sodas. A water bottle or two with odd brand names. And a Red Dog beer can. He put them in his carriage and unlimbered his own sack. There were other people using some of the machines today; not surprising as school had just gotten out. There was a shaky old man with a ponderous, ancient face of sad wisdom he no longer knew how to impart. A young woman—a girl, really—dark-haired and a little prim of expression but with a rather sweet face, freckled faintly about nose and cheeks. A little old lady with hair like cauliflowers and a quiet, humble sort of face. Ronnie gave them a glance or so (especially the girl) and started feeding cans into the machine next one end. There were two machines for cans, two for plastic bottles, and one for glass. The plastic were side by side in the middle, a can machine on each side, and the glass on the right-hand end. Ronnie pulled up to the right-hand can machine. Cans happened to be most numerous in the upper layer of his sack, so he would do them first. He placed the cans in the round hole near the top, where rubber treads sensed it and whirred furiously, pulling the can into a dark tunnel where it rotated on a valley between two turning cylinders while red grid-style rays scanned the bar code. There was a hum and grumble and a clunk or two as the machine booted up, recognized the brand as one sold by Super Stupor and scooped it swiftly into the crusher with a flat pendulous lever. A grinding, crunching sound announced the can’s compaction, and on the little bar-shaped screen to the left of the hole, a dollar figure appeared showing a 5¢ value, with the blue-upon-black square old-style-digital letters saying underneath Please Insert Cans. He fed in cans quickly, bending to the sack and straightening up to stuff in cans in a rather tiring rhythm, as the sour vinegar-beery smell of the sack’s interior rose to greet him. Clunk. A Monsterade Zero energy drink had landed in the eject chute, and the screen read Store does not accept this brand. He tossed it in the carriage; it had a CT value. The nice-featured girl had finished with the other can machine and was now inserting plastic bottles in the machine next to him. Several of them kept getting rejected—and rejected—and rejected. “Try putting ‘em in headfirst.” Ronnie said to her. She turned to glance at him a little distractedly. “But it says Try Bottom First.” “It doesn’t know what it’s talking about.” Ronnie said dryly. “Just keep switching ends.” The girl pushed in accordingly, a little dubious. “Now it’s saying Wrong add-on Code.” “Push it in headfirst again.” Ronnie advised. She did, and this time the machine, after rolling the bottle about and thinking it over, made the revving hum that was its’ equivalent of swallowing and pressed it into the shredder with a bizarre liquid squoolsh like an ice machine. “Hurrah.” Ronnie said. “Hey, thanks for the help.” she answered. “Your first time?” She nodded, a little nervously, as she pushed in a green Diet Sprite. Immediately there was a loud thud as the bottle fell into the reject chute and the screen showed a Store does not accept this brand message. “Oh man.” she exclaimed. “Put those aside and ask the clerk for a refund.” he told her. “These tickets, they—get cashed at the help desk?” “Or any register.” Ronnie smiled. “Yeah, I’m all new at this,” she explained, “I mean I used to think only poor guys and homeless—lowlifes—you know—did this can stuff, and we always felt sort of ‘we were raised to better’ than that, you know? and now with half my friends having parents out of work and talking about” she giggled, “meeting cute guys at the cans, I guess I sorta don’t feel that way now.” “As one of the cute guys in question, I confess to feeling flattered.” said Ronnie grandly, and as he expected it made her laugh. “What’s your name, by the way?” she said as she pushed in the last bottle. “Ronnie Wendy. And yourself?” “I’m Travel.” she smiled. “Travel Lane. I’d shake hands but they’re all gross from the bottles. I’m really glad to meet you.” “Travel.” he repeated, staring at her fixedly. “That’s an interesting name.” “So is a boy named Wendy.” she said tartly. He acknowledged the sally with a laugh. “It’s my last name.” he explained. “Don’t ask me why on earth my ancestors had to go and choose a girl’s name as surname. It probably had some different connotation then, for all we know, or some immigration official spelled it phonetically. You from around?” “I’m from Colebrook, actually, but I go to St. James.” “I’m from Pleasant Valley.” Ronnie smiled. “And I go to St. Joseph’s. Oh, don’t forget your ticket!” “Yeah, right??” she laughed as she pulled the receipt out of the slot. “So I just go up there and ask them…” “Tell them you have cans the machine wouldn’t eat and you need someone to write out a receipt for them.” “I’ll do that. Thank you. Hey, it was nice running into you, Ronnie. I’m sure I’ll see you ‘round.” “It was a pleasure.” Ronnie said, his face alight. “You take care now!” “Bye, Ronnie!” “Bye, Travel! Travel far and safely!” She pressed her lips together. “You make any plays on my name and you and I will be unfriends!” Ronnie, who had bent to his cans again, straightened slowly up and stared at her. “Do you read old books?” he said with interest. “Because I’ve never heard anyone but me say that.” She laughed. “Therefore we are their unfriends.” she quoted. “Holy mackerel, you can quote the Silmarillion?” he exclaimed. “Oh, you know that one! Amazing! Nobody else ever gets it.” “We’ve got to get together sometime and have a good talk about Tolkien.” he said. “Hey, St. James’ mass is at 9:30, right? The 8:00 Mass at St. Joe’s gets out around nine. Slip in the back toward the end and I’ll spot you.” “Yeah, and then we have, what, twenty minutes till my service starts? Why don’t you come join St. James? We always need new members!” Ronnie laughed. “Let’s not go into religious issues this early.” he said. “If we have unfinished talking to take care of when your church starts, I might sit in the back and listen, but I’m Catholic.” “I understand.” she nodded. “Well, see you Sunday, at any rate. I’m so glad I met you!” “Same here!” smiled Ronnie, and then she was gone. He felt the high joy of chance-meeting slowly ebb as the world around returned to him. Rummaging among the remaining bottles disclosed only a few more cans, some crushed or of brands like Hard Iced Tea or the tall blue Bud Lite beer cans he knew the machine never accepted; these he threw on the cart. The two various old people had finished and gone, and a dour middle-aged man with a dull heavy face was using the glass-machine. Ronnie moved over to the plastic one. This one had a hinged metal panel over the orifice with a triangle of green-lit dots in the top. He pushed in a Poland Springs bottle; it was rather squashed, but the green pine-tree label was good, so he took off the cap and blew into it, removing the dents like a balloon. He pushed it into the orifice, the panel swinging inward. The metal panel clapped shut and the lights went red as the machine whined, grumbled and rolled the bottle over and over as it scanned. Then it made up its’ mind to have dinner and the lever swung down from the right, scooping the bottle into the shedder. There was a liquid squelching sqwatch, as if ice-water was being crushed through bars far inside, and the panel-lights went green again and the machine hummed on a higher note of readiness. Ronnie pushed in the next bottle. It seemed forever until the sack, now nearly empty, was free of all plastic bottles and he could punch the green receipt button. Printing receipt, please wait, it said as the printer inside made weird noises and purred before finally spewing out one tab of pinkish-backed paper. Putting this in his pocket with the receipts Ronnie put the five or six cans he’d somehow overlooked into the can machine and surveyed what remained. Glass was always least plentiful, fortunately as it was heavy, and there were about ten assorted Budweisers, Heinemin’s and Corona Lite bottles, as well as a brand or two Ronnie was sure would be rejected. The glass machine had a hinged metal panel with lights like the plastic, but it made different sounds, rattling and thrumming instead of gwirrrmmmm like the plastic, and the exit chute had a guillotine-like catchdoor that dropped down the second you lifted it, to keep rejected glass from flying right out and spewing the area with shrapnel. There was a delicious sound of crashing tinkling as the crusher smashed the glass inside the machine, and then Ronnie was done. “I’m all set.” he told the walrus-like white-haired gent who was on bottle duty tonight and had come in to mop the floor. He wore the yellow Super Stupor shirt they used as uniform in the Winsted branch. He proceeded to count the forty or so smashed cans, twisted-up-in-knots water bottles and bizarre brands of can and bottle that Ronnie had culled from under bushes and weeds during his passing along ten miles of highway. If it had a CT value, Winsted Super Stop & Shop would refund it. As far as Ronnie knew only a couple other branches had such a policy. But he liked it, at any rate; 100% acceptance rate of his cans as opposed to about 90% under usual circumstances previous to the policy. The old cash register sputtered and chuttered and ground out a long strip of paper, which the Walrus stamped and initialed and handed to him. Ronnie thanked him and headed inside. The produce dept. wafted cooler air toward him from the left. He turned and strode up the avenue between the close-set cash registers and the café area beside the restrooms, just beyond which was the service desk. The girl behind the counter smiled at him; tonight it was one of the prettier ones and they made small talk while she scanned and cashed his receipts. She was tall and slim in a nice kind of way, with a high beautiful face and very odd, pale blue, startlingly bright eyes. Her hair was a sort of dark golden-brown, tied up behind her. She had a tight wide smile that showed her white teeth charmingly. He liked Brooke, and as he’d seen her before at the Methodist church they were already friends. He stopped in at the bathroom to wash his hands—“canning” made them pretty gross, as Travel had remarked, and he wasn’t surprised to see how brown he made the sink. The receipts had totaled nearly $11: not bad, not bad at all for one sack. He headed on down Rt. 44 with an empty sack and a full pocket. East of Winsted the high, lumpy hill country is cloven by a winding valley, oddly (for its’ size) unoccupied by any considerable stream. There is, from the round marsh beneath Super Stupor onward, a small but quickly broadening stream, which empties into the wide western limb of the Farmington River some three miles from Winsted. Rt. 44 follows this, and then the Farmington, on its’ way to Hartford; and is accordingly more or less level for a great part of its’ distance. Ronnie passed the Cinerom plaza, where the Dollar Store and Peebles Clothing were as well as the cinema, and behind it a wild rolling forsaken farm high above the valley, the lights of the fields of Regional High School crowning the hilltop above it. Grey-yellow fields of old grass rolled over the valley wall. Ruinous barns stood sad and stern amid the watery green lower down. Stores and houses fell behind. He always considered that plaza to be the extreme edge of Winsted. Woods closed in around him. He biked by the picnic table place, a small cabin guarded by a giant rock atop which was pinned a picnic table; past the swamps along Mallory Brook, all bare and grey and brown, the hazel flowers a faint note of a lighter color, along with the dying yellow-green weeds. Winterberry, most of them leafless but a few still shrouded in yellowy-purple foliage, gleamed a clustered red. He came to the crossroads that always made him laugh. Down from the older cutoff loop of turnpike came a street labeled W. West Hill Rd. The road curved, passing a stretch of guant bare ash on the left and the Christmas tree farm on its’ hill to the right, and past it the Strange Farm. It was very old, a rambling stretch of mud-mired paddocks over the slope of the hill among dead hemlocks. What made it so queer was the ramshackle construction of the fences from old slab planking, posts far too long rising all different lengths, leaning every which way and, coupled with the dark mud and dead trees, cast a most peculiar atmosphere over the big grey barn and lumber workshop toward the street. The mud of the drive was continuously being paved with wood chips, until the mud worked up through it and made it marshy again. A sign on the barn declared this as Eaglebrook Farm and proclaimed the widely divergent activities of meat butchering, land surveying and furniture crafting. A strong animal odor blew from it. A few black-and-white cows looked up as he passed. Then he came past the main winterberry place, with the red blush of berried bushes amid a yellow-brown curve of swamp between the rail grade and street, and went down into the open reach of valley where the antiques barn stood. Behind it were old farms now turned into absurd elderly housing. There was a factory with a queerly-shaped parking lot like a broad street a hundred feet wide. Another absurd street joined on the right, not far after the Old North Road came down from the mountainside of Wallens Hill: E. West Hill Rd. He coasted down the double hill and past the bridge over Mallory Brook, now the size of a small river. There was, he knew, a pair of deserted loops of old road around the hill the modern turnpike sliced right through, following the brook; but they were too grown over to allow easy passage. He reached the intersection with Ripley Hill Rd and hesitated: going that way was more direct but involved the worst hill in Winsted, narrow and perilous curves with no room whatsoever for a bike and a winding plunge down the side of a small mountain. He usually went up that way so he could walk his bike; it was always can-rich. He went on down Rt. 44. He passed the gas station that had dressed itself up like a country store (but inside was just like any other gas station store) and glanced at the small brick house beside it, quaint and peculiar behind its’ board fence. There used to be ivy on it but some enterprising owner had cleared it off, ruining the look but probably saving the house. Ivy could wreak hob with mortar. Over a hill past that log cabin restaurant and the little boutique with the closed fruit stand, he passed the house with rich deep blue siding (the only house in miles to have real color!) and came at last to his turnoff. A short crossroad, grandly titled Morgan Brook Rd, cut through the triangle of land between Rt. 44 and Rt. 181, before that road finally wandered over to join the turnpike at the transfer station and Barkhamsted Highway Dept. It was straight, the pavement old and full of cracks—but not, however, holes. He pulled to a stop beside the blue trash bin by the parking space anglers used and peered in: only a couple of Sam Adams ale bottles, but that’s 10 cents right there, and enough dimes make a dollar. They rattled awfully in his basket. He reached the junction with Rt. 181 and came at last back home, to Pleasant Valley. The village was well-named, he thought to himself as he biked along beside the broad river. A deep vale lay between steep mountain-walls, the floor level and farmed. North the dale ran in a long narrow valley to Riverton, walled by pines: the ironically named Peoples’ Forest, made on the ruins of an Indian reservation. In summer Pleasant Valley was soft, sheltered and quiet, green and pleasant with a peacefulness of atmosphere hanging over the place. He never knew what it was, but something in the placid way the brown river flowed deep and silent beneath the road, or the way the short squat oaks along the right stood on the high bank, 15 feet above the water; or the compact content shape of the square broad low Episcopal church as it stood amid its’ churchyard of quiet grey tombs under quiet grey maples; seemed for him the essence of peacefulness. It was why he had taken the apartment in the first place, he supposed, even though there were others closer to Winsted. He passed the ancient drive-in movie theater—the second of two remaining open in the entire state, surrounded by green pines, the tall screen rising by the road under taller hemlocks. It faced away from the road and the plywood of its’ high back was peeling off. This late in the year it was closed. Big barns rooted by bushes into the earth they stood on rose amid comfortable hayfields and old houses. He reached the cemetery behind its’ low stone walls and murmered a prayer for the dead. The dead slumbered on, but if any were still in Purgatory they would be in need of such. He came to the crossroads with Ripley Hill Rd and smiled as he looked up at the high rounded shape of the small mountain—though Ripley Hill was likely it’s name, from the road that crossed over it being so called, even though as usual it never appeared on the maps. To the right the east arm of the crossroads crossed the Farmington by an old iron bridge, stained with rust-drip over its’ white paint. The great X-shapes of the high girders made strange shadows, and underfoot the roadbed was composed of concrete in iron mesh, the iron rusting through the concrete in netted grids of orange-brown. Ahead ran on the road up the valley, on the west side of the river. Ripley Hill Rd came down from the left. He biked over the bridge and came in view of the farmhouse where he now dwelled. The road up the east side of the river joined here on the left, and to the right was the dirt parking area for fishermen. In the corner of the two roads was the yard of Ronnie’s house. Old maples and pines shielded it from the road. It was brick. A wing at the back and been sealed off from the main house by walling the connecting door shut, and in the two rooms thus sundered Ronnie Wendy made his home. He parked his bike around in back, chaining it to the slender maple that stood out from the patch of woods. Not that bike theft was likely here in remote Barkhamsted, but old habits died hard, and a former Waterburian like him got in the habit of locking things. His old blue pickup with the high wooden sides stood quietly in the farthest corner of the gravel parking area, almost against the ruinous shed that ended the yard. The three little old ladies—sisters, he supposed, though they never said—who inhabited the main house were always asking him why he never drove and why he always biked, but so far he had no real problems with them. He went his way, and did the yard work and leaves in exchange for discounts on the rent, and was quite happy living here alone. He unlocked the old door. It was old—probably had served the servants’ quarters when this house was built—but the lock wasn’t; the old ladies not wanting to trust a key to unknown tenants that also fit the main house. It stuck as usual and he had to shove. For porch there was a single slab of sandstone, cut from who knew where and probably left over from a foundation. It led into his sitting room. The floor was of rough hardwood that had warped and arched apart over time. He had accumulated two or three armchairs from junk piles during bulky waste week in Farmington—lovely pieces, velvety olive and old blue with carved backs—and a small sofa, also blue, with a classic flower pattern. It too had carved woodwork, along the back, and somehow Ronnie’s random taste had succeeded in choosing perfect furnishings for that rather plain old room, with what he called “old patterns” (doorframes carved in fluted vertical lines, with square corner blocks into which were carved concentric circles) framing door and window, and the brown chest of drawers that the old ladies had left there. Ronnie had repainted, doing the walls in a very faint blue and the frames in good brown. A fireplace stood in the wall between the two rooms. Ronnie shivered. The heating system had never been extended to these two rooms, used for storage until the apartment days, and that was one of the reasons the rent was so ridiculously low--$300 a month plus utilities. That suited Ronnie just fine. In exchange for a rent-free month he had bought chimney brushes and cleaned out the old chimney. The damper was rusted away, so he jammed a sheet of metal at an angle in the throat of the fireplace, and that worked just as well. Leaves and squirrel nests were a problem as well as mountains of ancient soot, and Ronnie’s scarf over his face was black. “You’re gonna get asthma,” old Mrs. Pine had clucked as he scrambled over the roof. “Emphysema.” Mrs. Hill had chimed in in her deep woeful tones. “He’ll be just fine, I’m sure,” Mrs. Deer had chirped, and shooed the others away. Now he piled sticks on top of some cardboard and lit this with a match. It took a good deal of blowing and moving twigs around with the hooked poker—rescued, with a fire-shovel, from a vacant house—but he soon had the sticks burning well, and when he was sure they had “caught”, he added a log. The thin red streams of fire poured around the log’s underside, without effect at first, but when it got hot enough Ronnie knew it would go up nicely. The fireplace was doubtless how the servants heated themselves in the first place, for it was like a window between the two rooms and could be lit from either. Soon there was enough of a blaze to throw heat into both rooms; it never got the place warm, but it kept it bearable even in the grimmest weather. The original builders must have been men of substance, considering that in those days your house was taxed by how many “smokes” or fireplaces it had, and this house had three. Ronnie supposed you could heat it better with a couple of space heaters like the previous tenants had done, but electricity cost money, and by doing all his cooking on the fire and only using the single outlet when he wanted to watch a movie, he seldom had to pay anything for electricity. Of course he also had to charge his cell phone; it was prepaid, so he never had a landline phone. When he was sure the fire was all right, Ronnie went into the other room. This was his bedroom, with his bed taking up half the space, his grandmother’s bureau overflowing with clothes, and the bookshelves with TV on top taking up the rest. His bed was near the fireplace, or had been since the cold weather began. With a double quilt and flannels he was seldom cold at night. He stashed the money in an old coffee can on his bureau and went over to the little closet-sized bathroom haphazardly installed in one corner. It was barely large enough to stand in. There was a shower that didn’t work over an ancient metal dragon-foot tub and a battered toilet (no sink, but there was an old sink in the sitting room and that was where he’d hung the mirror) and towel rack fastened to the wall. “My grandson did all the work here, but he didn’t have very much money and we didn’t either, so we had to make do, I’m afraid.” Mrs. Deer had chirped when she was showing Ronnie around. He had been about the twentieth to look at it since the third tenant abandoned ship in the middle of a hard winter, and so when he insisted on trading yard work for discounted rent the old ladies hadn’t made a peep. One of the things he’d done since he came was to get that door to actually shut all the way. Going back into the sitting room he opened the doors of several cupboards standing forlornly above the old sink. Two were packed with cans and some soups, the other two were laden with canning jars. These last were full of preserved wild strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, and elder and raspberry jam as well. There were also six cans of garden carrots, eight of canned apples (though they were going bad and he was beginning to doubt the wisdom of the idea), several of green tomato pickles and peaches, and even one jar of beans. He had spaded up a huge overgrown meadow place in back Mrs. Pine confided had been their garden, “but our backs are too far gone for that now, dearie me” and all year he had tended a garden, saving seeds so he wouldn’t have to buy as many. The old ladies got a tithe of it, of course, but Ronnie got most. There were times in the summer when his entire diet had been beans and blackberry—or blueberry—or elderberry—pie. He decided on chickpeas and ziti tonight, and put the chickpeas in one saucepan and the water for the pasta in the other. There wasn’t room for much more on the round hamburger grille he used for cooking. While he waited he sat down in the armchair nearest the fire and stretched out his legs until his feet could rest on the hearth. His feet were always cold. He smiled as he gazed at the great dark beams, warped with wide age fissures down their centres but still sound, that crossed the white ceiling about seven feet above the floor. To save on material, he supposed, old houses often had low ceilings, and this one was no exception. Beams—a fire—a cosy chair—what more did a man need, really? Travel Lane drove out of Winsted with an unusually light heart. Meeting a handsome guy at the cans had not been what she expected, and it surrounded the whole dingy stale-vinegar-smelling can room with a sort of glow in her memory. Odd, though, she knew his face, now she came to think of it, didn’t she? She’d seen him somewhere else. Frowning she tried to chase down the memory. Something about a picnic table. Ah! She had it now. She had seen him at the Fourth. Colebrook, where she lived, had the little parade and ceremony every year on the 4th of July. It was a tradition. This year, somehow, lingered in her memory as more typical of the holiday than she had experienced in many years. It had been bright and sunny, not too hot. Colebrook Center seemed to shine in the strong white light, almost a glow, and she had never felt its’ peculiar atmosphere so strongly since the days when she was a little kid. Five roads met at a hilly juncture, the main road coming up from Winsted, a small narrow back road at an angle to the right, a road going down to the left, a road going up to Massachusetts seven miles north…Between the main road and the small back road was a narrow tongue of land, green and elevated, the sort of formation Tolkien called a “naith”, with the big old comfortable green maples banking the edges. The white rail fence she always sat on top of to watch the parade, feet entwined in the bottom rail. The old white Congregational church farther back along the naith, with those fat white pillars vertically grooved fronting the porch. The way in which the curving rolling little roads, patched white and deep gray with shade and sunlight, swooped up to and crossed the roadmeet. The old-fashioned General Store (open as a store, now), tall and square and top-heavy, though the ancient spruce beside it was cut down. It was a green-and-white, breezy, cosy place. New England small-town. She had enjoyed the groups of uniformed firemen, police, veterans and band or two that formed the staple of the parades as she had not done in years. There was something almost tangible over the whole scene, holding the charm in place as it were: it felt like she was in one of those “children’s books” of a century ago, like Alcott or Caddie Woodlawn or Laura Ingalls Wilder. There was even an artist sitting with his legs folded under him upon the green bank, hardly looking up save now and then as the next group of Cub Scouts or whatever marched past. He had straight bronze-red hair and he looked strange, sharp like a probing blade, like one who penetrates things. After the parade she had filed into the little old church with everyone else for the service; they were Episcopalians but this wasn’t a Sunday service and was supposed to be undenominational. She loved the quaint soft Colonialness of the inside, white walls and brown pews and red sanctuary, so different from St. James. Speeches were made and the usual silly patriotic sentiments unfurled; but that was part of the charm, too, like hearing your Dad sing a favorite nursery rhyme many years after you had outgrown it. She glanced over at him with a fond smile; he was drinking every word, absorbing the shallow sunny wisdom in utter agreement. They sang the Anthem, and the familiar rundown of really good music with sappy American lyrics, and Travel sang as well as she could, loving the sound a crowd singing in unison makes. “God bless America”, “My Country, tis of thee” (which as a little girl she had sung as “Author of Lumberty” instead of liberty)—Battle Hymn of the Republic— Then they had gone downstairs. The old ladies had huge slices of assorted pies on separate plates, as well as all sorts of salad, macaroni dishes and such like. Travel took some tuna-macaroni salad, some scalloped (scalped!) potatoes, lasagna and a plate of pie and headed outside. A slight breeze ruffled the maple leaves and flapped the white plastic table covers. She sat down and looked over her shoulder to see where her dad was. Conversation with one of her neighbors took up all her attention for the next few minutes, but she did notice the end of the table was now occupied by the strange artist. He was eating with a certain contained enjoyment. Looking up the same second she did, their eyes met, and both quickly glanced away so as not to be rude. He wasn’t there when she again remembered him a few minutes later. But she knew his name now. It was Ronnie. “Why do I feel so strangely about you, Ronnie?” she said aloud as she drove. Gorgeous pine forests swept by outside, ravines deep with hemlocks at the bottom of which fumed a roaring brook. “As if you and I are joined by more than love of Tolkien. As if something tremendous is upon us, and you and I are meant to face it together.” She fell silent, for she was at the best part of the way home. Green lovely forests of deep hemlock shut in the curving road. She passed an open swampy field shut in by alders and strange dwarfed spruce. The pines drew in again, and Travel suddenly slowed, almost to a crawl. No one was coming and she wanted to drink this in. She saw the lane into the woods this way, as she rolled past: a sudden gaping in the sweeping green, a strip of deep moss sunken in two ruts as from goneby wheels. It could be only a developer’s right-of-way into a lot he never managed to sell; or it could be the unassuming mouth of some long-forgotten wagon road, winding from here into the unknown wilderness. Excitement pulsed in her as she brought the car to a stop. For a moment she sat motionless, staring with delight down the forest way. Then she spun the wheel and drove slowly down the mossy lane. It was the queerest, deepest, greenest wood she had ever seen. Beard-like hemlock swept and drooped around her, dark secret trunks beneath the green. Reddish-green moss underneath. The lane curved; green limbs closed overhead, and green intricate foliage curved in a wall to follow it. Wet turf squished beneath her tires. She emerged in a wonderful secret meadow, but the jouncing of her car made her realize the lane was no longer navigable. She put it in park, and with the engine still running, walked ahead as if in a dream. Wet spongy moss sloshed at her sneakers. She stood at the edge of the pines and gaped like a delighted child. A beautiful little meadow opened before her, short grass that held a lingering glow of green covering it as closely as moss. Alders fenced in the far end, and the shapely jags of pine rose above them. The feathery green boughs of the hemlocks around her stooped in dark-emerald curtains to sweep the grass. A mountain stream flowed strong and clear across the meadow’s end, brown-tinged and a little deep. It felt like staring into a thick slab of amber. The whole glen was only thirty feet across. “It’s like a place where you’d expect a fairy to live.” she exclaimed. “There are no fairies in these woods.” Travel started, suddenly aware of how ridiculous her position was. But nobody seemed to be in sight. “Um…hello?” she called. “Whom are you in seeking for, traveler?” the voice said again. It was deep and powerful, and very indistinct of direction. Mostly it seemed to be coming from the deepest part of the forest of hemlocks. “I wasn’t—I just came here because I—“ The gloom under the hemlocks was much deeper than she remembered it being. Try as she might she could discern no shapes, not even tree trunks. “All who turn suddenly from their paths seek something. If they do not know whom they seek, then they are fair game, and such as me may have our way.” “Who are you?” Travel demanded. “Are you the landowner or something?” “Who am I?” the voice from the darkness mocked. “I am what I chose to be, and what others forced me to choose. Even so are you, for you approach a crossroads, and soon you too will be forced to choose….me.” “Get out here where I can see you. I warn you, I’ve got a weapon in the car and I’ll use it!” “Weapons.” the voice sighed. “I see you are hardly what I expected. Last of the Lanes, so feeble and so foolish. I was expecting something a little more…intelligent…from the descendant of Wayham Lane. I am disappointed in you, traveler. Go your way—you can be no threat to me, for you are already mine.” “There’s no such person as Wayham.” Travel shouted. “None of my grandparents have that name. No one. And what do you mean by calling me names, anyway?” But there was no answer from the darkness of the trees. Travel backed out of the beautiful lane, regret and trepidation fighting in her for mastery. Regret that she had to leave that meadow; and fear lest she see the speaker of the voice. She drove up the Colebrook road in silence, her thoughts churning. Winter held sway over the countryside, even this early into November. The mysterious forests gave way to ordinary country houses and yards. She almost ran the stop sign at the crossroads where the old Colebrook road crossed, alone amid bare brown fields with a single maple-fenced farmhouse at one corner. An old red barn stood at the opposite corner, sentinel over the fields. Lone and desolate a raised foundation lay amid the long grass, a dwarf apple tree leaning sadly over it. She drove past the big old house with the weird fence: upright spikes of granite stuck in the ground, all different lengths, holes bored through them and connected by an old rusted chain. Woods closed in again, green and homely with laurel, and then she was at Colebrook Center. In the grey winter the village lost much of the atmosphere she noticed at the Fourth. It had a moss-grown windblown look now, the ancient block-like houses standing around the meeting roads that rolled up from all directions. Smith Hill Rd by the church, Rt. 183 she’d come in by, School House Rd by the farm buildings across the village, and the Norfolk road climbing up past the General Store on her left. On impulse Travel pulled into the short parking area in front and got out. The Colebrook General Store was a high building, with round pillars holding up a portico above the narrow porch. A railing made of old pipes ran around it, now decorated with pine garland. The woodwork had a rounded, lumpy, unsmooth appearance that comes to old wood repeatedly peeling and being scraped and repainted with layers of paint. The siding was tan, the trim dark green. A pair of double doors hung a little crooked, and Travel depressed the latch and pushed inward. The doors gave weird crinkly groans as they wobbled open, as if they were hinged with scotch tape and chewing gum—as old Grandmother Lane would say. Inside looked much more like what she fancied the stores in old books must have looked like, than anything she’d seen. A medium high white ceiling with plastered patterns. Ancient warped hardwood floorboards, each board arched in the center almost, dark dark brown. Several tables to the left under big square old windows, heavily plasticked against the coming cold. A single doubled rack of shelves, with a depleted stock of dry goods and groceries. A couple of shelf-racks by the back and right-hand walls. A ledge ran around half the room, under the windows, and the walls were paneled brown. Assorted antiques hung here and there: a fossil cash register, snowshoes, a saw. The back and half the right walls held clear deli cases with meats and cheeses and cookies on display. A blackboard held chalked-on prices of the various sandwiches. Travel paid for a few cookies and went back to her car. She really shouldn’t have these, she ruminated as she savored frosting and chocolate chip, but after an experience like that she felt she needed a treat. Starting the engine she backed carefully out, made a U-turn across the intersection when she realized she was pointing the wrong way, and drove up Smith Hill Rd past the church. She glanced at the mossy railings and thought again of Ronnie. Maybe he could make sense out of the voice in the darkness. There wasn’t much to distract her on the way up: the woods of Smith Hill were all grey and waiting for winter. She passed the elementary school that served half the area, where she’d gone as a kid, and the road steepened as she climbed up toward the farm and the broad rolling top of Smith Hill. There, she knew, the view encompassed most of Hartland and Barkhamsted; but she was not going that way. Her house was just before the farm; it was, she supposed, more direct to get here from Winsted by going up Rt. 8 to the junction with Smith Hill, but she never did if she could help it. Smith Hill Rd climbed one of the craziest hills in Colebrook, and Coe Av/Colebrook Rd was at least free of steeps. She turned into the driveway that suddenly gaped in the grey woods; gaped like the mysterious lane in the green forest. She checked the mail (empty, Dad must have got to it again) and drove slowly up the curving lane. The Lane house was a very strange and charming place. The drive was paved with yellow stones and elevated several feet above the swampy ground. A lovely little pond opened on the right, bordered with intricate mossy banks and alder brush, a lonely and peculiar spot in winter. She hoped the ice got thick enough for skating soon, then she could have her friends over for a big skating party and Grandmother would have an excuse to bake her fabulous frosted fruitcakes, as Bobby called them. Everyone called him Bobba Fett. The drive went up a rise into what Travel always maintained was the loveliest pine wood in Colebrook, even though after today she doubted the claim was true. White pine and low hemlock mingled on the left, and on the right green laurels and rhododendrons reigned. The house was a peaked ranch, two-storied, its’ yellow-brown siding and green trim fitting the surroundings perfectly. To one side was the detached house where Grandmother lived; alone, Grandfather Lane having passed to his reward long before Travel could remember. “The drive’s only as old as you.” Dad used to boast. “Put it in myself when I married and moved up here, I did. You should’ve seen it before, sunk into the swamp like a wagon road, you needed a jeep to get up it at all.” Travel smiled as she parked, and sat for a moment, gazing at the Lane house. “There’s always been a Lane in Colebrook.” her dad would say sometimes. “This house has always had a Lane here,” the strong tart voice of her grandmother chimed in. “And always should. It will be yours, Travel, when your father and I go.” She got out and closed the door. Maybe if she hurried she wouldn’t be spotted by Grandmother and could actually have some time to herself. But she was too slow, as usual: her grandmother’s door popped open and the old voice called “Tra—a—vel!” “What is it, Grandmother?” called Travel, a little exasperated. Ever since she got her license three months ago the old woman had been cornering her the moment she returned, anxious to know where she went, had she had any accidents, any…unusual things happen? Each time Travel would respond impatiently but nicely in the negative, and the old woman would nod, reassured…and somehow disappointed as well. “I made you some iced cookies!” her relative called. Travel came up, laughing. “Gee, if I’d known that I wouldn’t have stopped at the General Store!” she said. “What’s the occasion, anyway?” “You know it’s the feast of St. Martin today, don’t you?” the old woman retorted, shutting the door. “Oh, Grandmother!” She was a staunch follower of the religious calendar, and the Lanes could count on some dessert or other almost every other day. Travel sat down in the small living room. A fire was burning hotly in the brick fireplace. The house was very old, and looked it, with the exposed beams and cracked floorboards. Most of it had been completely rebuilt when Travel’s father returned here, as it had become too decrepit for even a stubborn old lady like her grandmother to endure. “So,” said Grandmother Lane when Travel was finishing her second cookie, “what happened?” Travel looked up, startled, and dropped crumbs all over her lap. “Uh…what do you mean? Nothing happened.” The old woman leaned forward. Her long drawn old face seemed to have hardened in one shape like dried wood, but the shrewd eyes were concerned. “Someone spoke to you.” “But…I…” She held up her hand. “It’s in your eyes, child.” She sounded suddenly weary. “The eyes never lie. I may be an old woman, Travel, but I’m not stupid. You may be stupid, but you’re not blind. In fact that alone may be your salvation.” “Please, Grandmother, what are you talking about? I don’t understand.” Old Grandmother Lane gazed at her. In her rose-hued sweater and crimson shawl she seemed somehow terrible, ageless, a custodian and a guard. “The Lanes go very far back.” she said, rising to her feet. Her knitted leggings kept snagging her faded blue skirts as she walked across the room. A very old book stood there, on the mantel, the leather cover cracked and mildew-stained, the pages brown with great age. She beckoned Travel over. Intrigued, the dark-haired girl obeyed. Grandmother Lane pulled back the ancient covers with great care. The spine made a sound like dry twigs breaking as it turned. “We have copies of this, in order to refer to it without the necessity of opening it.” she said. “I suppose a rare-book dealer would pay three or four fortunes for it, but we do not sell it, any more than we would see this house.” She moved aside for Travel to look, holding the cracked pages with one hand. It seemed to be some sort of family record, with a few antique woodcut-like portraits of quiet-faced but grim men in even more antique dress. Neat flowing writing in a totally unintelligible script was faded a faint brown with age. “I cannot read these letters.” said Travel. “No,” said Grandmother Lane, “but I can. They used an odd form of cursive four hundred years ago, not to mention Shakespearean dialect, but you grow accustomed to both, like reading in a foreign language. These are the Lane family annals, of the first three generations of Lanes to reside in this part of the world.” “When did we first come?” said Travel. “Were we always here?” “Always.” affirmed the old woman. “A crude hut of logs at first, insulated with leaves and roofed with hemlock bark. There weren’t even Indians in these parts. They stayed away. When they did come, they hung around the Lake over in Winsted and hunted, and then left. They spoke in whispers of strange spirits. But Wayham stayed. He, and all his children after him. There’s always been a Lane here, and there always should be.” “What happens if there isn’t?” Grandmother Lane turned the ancient pages. She tapped one paragraph. “See if you can read that.” Travel pored over the peculiar lettering. Some were familiar, but the rest were scrawled, and she soon gave up. “Can you tell me?” The old woman smiled a little. “To-day the Foureth of Novembre, the Wayfindre ye'' came. I write his Words for posterity, for they are Laden with Importe, I can y'e' feel.” “Please, in plain English?” wailed Travel. “Even Lord of the Rings makes more sense.” “That was how they both wrote and spoke, Travel, and it was the accepted grammar of the time, the ‘King’s English’ as they called it. What the bad grammar was like, you would not want to know. But if you insist— “Let there always be a Lane upon this spot, to watch over it even when they do not know they are so doing; for if no Lane is here to greet the Road it will be ill indeed for Arda.” “I still don’t understand.” said Travel in a quavering voice. “Neither do I, if that is any comfort, child.” said Grandmother Lane. “But our fathers took those words to heart, and however many times it is rebuilt, there has always been at least one who bears the name Lane residing here.” “But who is the Wayfinder?” “No one seems to know.” the old woman responded. “That was the only mention of him for a hundred years. He shows up again at the very end of the book, but no words of his are recorded. Nor can I find any other mention of him since.” “He must have been pretty old if he came by a hundred years later.” “Either that, or…he does not age.” Travel gave her grandmother an incredulous look. “Grandmother, are you telling me there are fairies in these woods?” The old woman stared at her with eyes like ice. “This year marks the four hundredth since the Wayfinder’s first appearance. I have diaries and letters from the Lanes who lived at the centenaries of his appearance. And there is one thing they all share, Travel.” “And that is…?” “They grow cryptic. Mysterious. They hint at strange things. They utter thoughts so deep and peculiar as to boggle the mind. And these strange sayings, even though a hundred years separates each sayer, might have been uttered by the same person.” “Is that why you always give me the third degree about what I’ve been and done?” Travel said lightly. Grandmother Lane nodded. “I had always hoped I would survive to see one of these centenaries, so I might observe for myself. So I ask you again, Travel Lane: has anything out of the ordinary happened to you?” Into Travel’s mind rose the odd remarks and departure of the man at church, the man in the brown coat with those strange, ancient eyes. “Two things, I suppose.” The old woman nodded as Travel told her of the man, and of the voice in the darkness. “So he mentioned Wayham.” she murmered. “Most interesting. Things are beginning, Travel. Be very careful.” Travel went inside her own house, feeling drained. What was happening here, anyway? This wasn’t Ireland or England or Europe, ancient lands with ruins older than God—so to speak; older than His Incarnation certainly—this was the New World, plain boring Connecticut, whose only ancient history was a bunch of Native Americans overthrowing each other. We need a mythology, she thought. A real one, not the infantile imaginings of tree spirits and Sun Brother. Did the gods ever walk these hills? Were there really fay-beings in the forests? Or was the dark voice right, and all mystery gone from the world, and no fairies in these woods? “Hey, Travel!” greeted Dad. She gave him her usual hug and kiss, and flopped down on the sofa. In a minute she would go and get her laptop and start Facebooking like a madwoman, but for now she just wanted to rest. “Did’y have any trouble with the cans?” Dad was asking. Travel opened her eyes and shook her head. “Y’got a letter, and it looks like a guy’s writing!” “Dad, I am not getting a boyfriend.” she exclaimed. “You know I’m barely old enough to even date.” “Glad you remember.” he observed tartly. For some reason he labored under the impression that she was a terrible flirt. All because he caught a boy kissing her at the last skating party. It had been touching but a little embarrassing as well, and it wasn’t like they’d smooched. “Hey Dad,” she asked as he came back in with her letter, “I wanted to ask you. About Mom.” Mr. Lane’s face froze. Literally. The doting affection disappeared, and his eyes went blank as a wall. “Why did she leave you?” Rufus Lane sat down heavily in the chair opposite her. His face seemed to sag. “She didn’t.” Travel sat up in shock. Her mom had gone when she was nine. Not a word since. Not a letter. Her dad had told her then that she had just—left, and begged that Travel not ask him any more. “Then what happened to her?” Travel could barely form the words. “Nobody knows.” said Mr. Lane. “She vanished. All her things untouched. Nothing taken. She was there when I went to sleep, and in the morning—she wasn’t.” He drew a deep breath and went on. “Police never found her. No footprints or anything. She’s never come back. We think she’s dead.” Travel was dimly aware of time ticking by, and yet she could not move, she could not speak. She heard the sound of sobbing nearby: an old man’s tears, feeble and pathetic, and still she sat there, unmoving, frozen, as her father cried in the darkness of the dimming room; and the voice in the darkness smiled in scorn.